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Believe it or not, what it might be telling you is you have the wrong tungsten diameter. If a doped tungsten forms a ball when you don't want it to, your tungsten is too small for the current you are running.

If you wanted it balled and the arc is dancing around but more heat for a second focuses the arc, your tungsten is too big. What you are doing is heating up the tungsten which results in better electron emission -- it should be hot enough at the current you are running to not dance around without gunning it.

Know what I mean?

This is new to me, I will do some testing and try different diameters and settings, thank you.

your daughter will do well there its a very good college and the area's real nice. If you ever make it over to visit her you'll have to drop by my shop and burn some rods
Funny enough I was working in Runcorn last year for 3 months so I know that area pretty well too.

Really is a small world!!!

I will most likely be over there summer after this one, I want to do some touring in Germany anyway. If you are still hanging aroung here then I will get your address and visit. I mostly am on the Hobart "weld Talk" forum at http://www.hobartwelders.com but visit here and Miller "Motorsport" often.

Something no one has mentioned yet is post-flow. If you have inadequate post-flow and/or you pull your torch away from the weldment too soon you will have tungsten frosting. It is something that is more prevalent with inverters in general but is not limited to them and will cause the exact problem that the initial poster experienced.

One good practice to get into is to lightly scratch the tungsten to your work before you strike an arc. Your start should be immediate when you do that.

If you are using pure or zirconiated with a Dynasty you are not realizing the full potential of your machine. Inverters are designed to run with a pointed tungsten and both pure and zirc will want to ball almost immediately. If you are going to use them, you might as well set your machine to 60 hz and run it like a regular transformer based unit.

IME, lanthanated and ceriated work best on my 300DX and 350DX. Thoriated also works well but I have gotten away from that because of health reasons and the performance isn't necessarily better.

I've never tried that. What does it do (I mean what effect does it have that makes it start better)?

It removes the frost from the tip of the tungsten and allows for a positive start. Since the frosting is the likely culprit of the poor start, it makes sense that removing a bit of it on the tip would help.